Up hill and down dale

Perhaps it's just me, but the cover of Jon Pountney's Valleys instantly calls to mind the "sunlit uplands" that we were promised by bullish Brexiteers. Valleys voters predominantly backed Brexit - not that they've seen any tangible benefits. The vote was fuelled by perceptions that the region has long been overlooked and neglected. Not by photographers, it has to be said - and Pountney sets out to show the Valleys in their best light, often quite literally, and to give them the attention they deserve.

This handsome, well-made photozine - a DIY effort in the face of mystifyingly disinterested publishers, for which Pountney met his crowdfunding target in just 36 hours - draws together a collection of images made over a number of years. A handful are already familiar, having appeared in the 2019 Waiting For The Light exhibition (most notably the net curtain billowing out of an open window in Treforest) or this year's Sheds show at the Turner House in Penarth. But most are new to these eyes, capturing the unique topography of the Valleys - tightly packed houses and scuzzy urban scenes down below, forests and steep green-flanked hills up above. (Not that Pountney draws a clear distinction between the built environment and the natural world - after all, the lesson from his Allure Of Ruins project is that here even the uplands are, if not manmade, then at least manscaped.)

As ever with Pountney, the collection has grown and coalesced organically over time, rather than being the result of deliberate planning. Much of his commissioned work takes place in the Valleys, and he's spent many a day driving around for Allure Of Ruins, so it was inevitable that he would amass a substantial portfolio. He's also called Treforest home for more than a decade now - a Valleys outsider becoming an insider through a real affinity for his surroundings.

In conversation at Treorchy Library as part of the Rhondda Arts Festival Treorchy (RAFT), Pountney expresses that enthusiasm, dismissing Cardiff as far less photogenic. Yet it was in the capital that his connection to (and love affair with) the Valleys first began - curiously enough, through a job taking portraits in Jumpin Jaks in the city centre. At weekends, he explains, the nightclub would be full of revellers from the Valleys, some of whom he got to know and who would invite him up to check out classic cars (a soft spot for which is evident from the photozine).

Pountney tells us that for many years he sought to photograph things that looked timeless, that couldn't be easily placed temporally. Two such examples would be Carpanini's Cafe and the Station Cafe, both in Treorchy and the latter a stone's throw from the library. But both have sadly closed down, so his camera and this photozine are now performing a memorialising function. He talks about bearing witness to a tragic loss of community spaces - and underlines the importance of places like the library continuing to exist.

Valleys has a subtitle: Volume 1. The way is paved for a sequel, so here's hoping it comes along before too long.

Jon Pountney in conversation with Offline's Brian Carroll